Comfort in the Uncomfortable

 I thought I knew what growth looked like.

When I made the decision to leave SciHi, I honestly believed I was stepping into discomfort - the kind that stretches, challenges, and perhaps heals. I thought that leaving would refresh my mind and spirit, that maybe a new environment could breathe life into the parts of me that were growing tired and heavy. I imagined that taking the risk would pull me forward, out of survival and into renewal.

But life has a way of offering clarity only in hindsight.

Had I gone to the state university, I would have found myself back in HR again - familiar work, familiar structure, familiar comfort. A different building, a new set of faces, better compensation, yes - but still a space I already understood and could navigate with ease. I realized later that what I thought was the braver path might have been the easier one.

SciHi, for all its chaos, pressure, and unpredictability, is where I am tested. It is where I am stretched beyond what I thought possible. It is where I grow, not because things are easy, but because every day asks more of me - not just as an educator or part of administration, but as a human being. I find comfort there sometimes, not because it is comfortable, but because it forces me to evolve.

It is strange - how the place that exhausts you is the same place that shapes you.

How the struggle you want to escape is the very furnace that forges you.

And so I stay, not because I have found peace, but because I am still becoming.

In a world that tells us comfort is the goal, I am learning this:

Growth rarely lives where everything is soft.

Sometimes, the truest comfort comes from the place that keeps us awake, alive, and unfinished.

Yes, I stay. For now.